Design and Theming

This track focuses on the development and implementation of design, interaction, usability, accessibility and navigation, from the most basic design ideas of layout and user experience ideas to technical knowledge of CSS. Equal focus lies on the tools used to bring all of this together into a Drupal site as well as on teaching basic HTML/CSS knowledge to newcomers.

We've all heard the buzzwords and read the pamphlets. And it sounds great on paper. Responsive design? Neat. Sign me up.

The design is the easy part; the psd's look great. But then you have to actually develop a responsive website. In Drupal. That will be maintained by (!= developer). Who browses in compatability mode.

In this session we'll discuss:
- some of the most popular responsive frameworks
- how you can leverage them in Drupal
- pre-rolled Drupal solutions
- some strategies for overcoming the big issues in responsive (Drupal) development

Let me introduce you to Bourbon. Bourbon is a lightweight mixin library that works with Sass. Many have already heard of the alternative mixin library Compass. Bourbon's purpose was to assemble a standard set of mixins that would be useful on every project. The simpler nature of Bourbon allows for an easier configuration process and a great option for those just getting to know Sass. Extend Bourbon to further help you with your page layout by also using Bourbon Neat.

Drupal 8 will have a fancy new template engine (Twig) and a simplified theme layer (we hope). We'll show you the new template syntax (don't worry, it's easy) and walk through some of the major problems in Drupal 7 that have either already been solved in Drupal 8, or that we are still working hard on improving.

In a typical product cycle designs are made, approved by clients and passed off to developers. Development completes and the final product does not represent anything from the original designs. This could be anything from visual to interactive disconnects. It is essential that none of the originally designed goals and business intents are loss in the translation from pixels to code.

If you haven't already heard, SASS is the new big thing these days in CSS that allows to create compliant code faster and opens up new and exciting possibilities for your themes.

In this session we'll go over the latest in SASS, Compass, Breakpoint, and grid systems like susy and show how to best work them into your next responsive theme, no matter the base you use (or don't use).